Kopbusters

About a month ago, we learned that reality TV had hit bottom, with the announcement of Smile, You’re Under Arrest, a reality show from Fox (of course) in which people with warrants are tricked into believing it will be the best day of their lives, only to discover it is actually the worst, as they are being arrested. The man responsible, Mike Darnell, talks about how the show will only have non-violent criminals. Oh, and it’s all okay, because (from Darnell): “If it were a regular person you’d feel bad for them, but they are all wanted by the law.”

So anyway, I was full up with hate for a good minute over that. But today, the internets provides good news, perhaps even an answer. Kopbusters (website currently down, most likely flooded with traffic). This show, created by Barry Cooper, is essentially a setup to catch the police breaking the law in a drug raid. They rented a house and outfit it with surveillance, then set up grow lights and two small potted plants that looked like weed, but weren’t. Eventually, the police raided the house, even though they had no legal method of “knowing” that there could be drugs inside. Here’s some of the raw footage.

Cooper is an ex-narcotics cop who now apparently makes his living selling videos about how to avoid getting busted for drugs. He also campaigns against the drug war.

I’m looking forward to seeing the show, and I hope it runs for a long, long time. (Or that we abolish the specialization of enforcement and remove the police as an institution. That would make me happy as well.)